I was scheduled to return to Bangalore last Sunday but then came the attacks in Mumbai so I delayed it for a week. I don't think there is any real danger to me in B'lore but I suppose it is better to be safe.
But that isn't what I want to talk about. In my last posting, I expressed my dismay at the short sightedness of my client, penny-wise and pound foolish really are at play here. I have been trying to get my head around the quality aspects of the project and as one might expect, I have been reviewing countless bugs. Yesterday it struck me that I wasn't seeing the entire picture; sure enough, when I asked about it I was told that a few weeks back, the Excel spreadsheet that was being used to track issues had gotten too big so they archived all the closed issues. If you are like me that is like discounting all American history up until World War I. How can you understand a project when you ignore the first 50% of its history?
I am just dumbfounded that due to a "managerial" decision not to use a real issue tracking tool there continues to be bad project management on a project of this scale.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
What is it that we don't understand
I have spent nearly two weeks in Bangalore working with a client and the outsourced engineering team they contracted for the project. Though I am contractually prevented from identifying the "players", my client is a household brand with a global footprint. Likewise the off-shore development partner is among the largest in the world. Together you would think that they would have this down to a science but you would be mistaken. Tools and processes are sophamoric and (IMHO) my client made a fundamental mistake by not having people embedded from day 1. This is a large project with 10s of thousands of staff hours and yet, untill recently, when they felt the project was in serious jeopady of missing key milestones and objectives, there was no direct representation of my client here in B'lore. The dev partner, eager for the potential long-term relationship, failed to demand reasonable terms, again IMHO. Now neither side is "happy"; people are working serious hours that may have been the norm for strart-ups 10-15 years ago, but neither of these are start-up. They are both companies billion dollar revenues but they short-change the effort regardless of the resources available to them. Some of it politics, some of it financial.
Now, as it often does, coincidence strikes. I exchanged email with another former collegue who is starting his own company. He has asked me to provide any insight I can give him on off shoring to India. My advice, particularly for a start-up with limited resources (both capital and time) is to seriously consider on-shoring. Sure from a finacial analysis on paper, India looks to be a much better deal but I am not sure they build in the true cost accurately. Travel, time, wear and tear on the staff that has to be on calls from 8:00 PM until midnight to discuss critical issues with the development team. The cost of doing business in India is rising, the cost of doing buisiness in the US is stabilizing or dropping in some instances. Plus, given the current financial situation, perhaps on-shoring serves a greater good.
Whatever my friend decides to do, my advice is to provide adequate resources, if he wants to off-shore, my council is that he have one of his own in B'lore and one of their staff at his site. Pay the price necessary to succeed, don't cut corners on tools or process, or it will come back to bite him in the a__.
Now, as it often does, coincidence strikes. I exchanged email with another former collegue who is starting his own company. He has asked me to provide any insight I can give him on off shoring to India. My advice, particularly for a start-up with limited resources (both capital and time) is to seriously consider on-shoring. Sure from a finacial analysis on paper, India looks to be a much better deal but I am not sure they build in the true cost accurately. Travel, time, wear and tear on the staff that has to be on calls from 8:00 PM until midnight to discuss critical issues with the development team. The cost of doing business in India is rising, the cost of doing buisiness in the US is stabilizing or dropping in some instances. Plus, given the current financial situation, perhaps on-shoring serves a greater good.
Whatever my friend decides to do, my advice is to provide adequate resources, if he wants to off-shore, my council is that he have one of his own in B'lore and one of their staff at his site. Pay the price necessary to succeed, don't cut corners on tools or process, or it will come back to bite him in the a__.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
A sign of the new economy?
Though I am not convinced it is a direct result, I find myself in an interesting position where I am being contracted by a "household name" company to help manage a project they have off-shored. I am not going to turn down the money but had they on-shored the project, in some other place than the high-tech hot-beds, they probably could have saved a considerable amount of capital.
As all two of the people who read this blog know, I am from Boise, Idaho. Boise is a pretty good sized town with a population > 200k (> 500k in the surrounding area). It has four distinct seasons, great lifestyle and good schools. The only negative I can say about it is that it still tends to be a bit conservative for me. All-in-all it would be a great place to live and raise a family. It has reasonable airline access to Portland, Seattle, Silicon Valley etc. and a good labor pool. Boise State and the University of Idaho bot have campuses there. The biggest names, at least in high-tech are HP and Micron. So why can't we on-shore to places like Boise, I am sure there are other cities that fit the bill as well? I don't know the answer but I think it may have as much to do with a false sense of financial economy than anything else. That 5:1 cost ratio we found in India during the latter part of the 1990's is now more like 2:1 today and shrinking. India is getting more expensive, in fact I have heard tales of India sub-contraction out to places like China and Viet Nam.
I believe in an open global economy but maybe we need to re-think our business strategies; move away from the short term view and look forward to a once again, expanding US economy.
Oh well, for me it is most of the next three months in Bangalore...
As all two of the people who read this blog know, I am from Boise, Idaho. Boise is a pretty good sized town with a population > 200k (> 500k in the surrounding area). It has four distinct seasons, great lifestyle and good schools. The only negative I can say about it is that it still tends to be a bit conservative for me. All-in-all it would be a great place to live and raise a family. It has reasonable airline access to Portland, Seattle, Silicon Valley etc. and a good labor pool. Boise State and the University of Idaho bot have campuses there. The biggest names, at least in high-tech are HP and Micron. So why can't we on-shore to places like Boise, I am sure there are other cities that fit the bill as well? I don't know the answer but I think it may have as much to do with a false sense of financial economy than anything else. That 5:1 cost ratio we found in India during the latter part of the 1990's is now more like 2:1 today and shrinking. India is getting more expensive, in fact I have heard tales of India sub-contraction out to places like China and Viet Nam.
I believe in an open global economy but maybe we need to re-think our business strategies; move away from the short term view and look forward to a once again, expanding US economy.
Oh well, for me it is most of the next three months in Bangalore...
Friday, September 26, 2008
yet another post...
So here is another of my very infrequent posts. Not that anyone reads them. I sometimes need to write them anyway. Recently I have been focusing a lot of time and energy toward updating and improving my testing tools & skills. In my current contract I am attempting to automate the testing of a very sophisticated web app using Selenium RC - Ruby. This app's UI is nearly all GWT and that is proving to be the biggest challenge. From my understanding, GWT does not generate element IDs by default and thus I find myself having to leverage Selenium IDE to get the xpaths for each element, and believe me they are not pretty.
On another front I am diving into RSPEC & RCOV which I find to be a double edged sword. Perhaps as my skills improve it will have a big upside but for now it is time consuming. I cannot remember where I saw it, on someones blog but the key words were "test your own code" so by default I would probably not maintain 100% coverage which contradicts most of my 20+ years of experience. The thing I really like about RSPEC is the ability to tease requirements out. Being able to have a client give me a terse rudimentary description of what an object should or shouldn't do seems like a big win. The hard part, just as with any testing, is just the commitment of doing it. It always seems that you are spending too much time developing specs and not enough time writing code. I have not broached the stories yet, the specs themselves are keeping me busy.
On a personal note, I turned 50 this past Wednesday, do I feel older? Not really but as scary as it sounds, I see more of my parents in me than I ever thought I would, both the good and the not-so-good. Nature or nurture, whatever the reason there it is.
On another front I am diving into RSPEC & RCOV which I find to be a double edged sword. Perhaps as my skills improve it will have a big upside but for now it is time consuming. I cannot remember where I saw it, on someones blog but the key words were "test your own code" so by default I would probably not maintain 100% coverage which contradicts most of my 20+ years of experience. The thing I really like about RSPEC is the ability to tease requirements out. Being able to have a client give me a terse rudimentary description of what an object should or shouldn't do seems like a big win. The hard part, just as with any testing, is just the commitment of doing it. It always seems that you are spending too much time developing specs and not enough time writing code. I have not broached the stories yet, the specs themselves are keeping me busy.
On a personal note, I turned 50 this past Wednesday, do I feel older? Not really but as scary as it sounds, I see more of my parents in me than I ever thought I would, both the good and the not-so-good. Nature or nurture, whatever the reason there it is.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
It has been a long, long time...
It has been several months since I last blogged, so i guess I should get off my ass and put something up. Not that anyone is waiting on pins and needles for a new post from BearBlu. As the saying goes, "the only thing constant is change". So currently I am working two contracts; the bigger of the two is with AgileMind in SF. AgileMind is doing some very interesting work in the area of web based education using the SCORM statndard for Learning Management Systems. Working with them is like a re-union of sorts. The VP is Andy Felong, with whom I worked with at Walmart.com; the Sr. Architect is Dorothy Gantenbien; we crossed paths at Profluent, a start-up that never reached a full start. By the way, Dorothy is an aspiring photographer, check out her work here. Finally, the configuration and build master is Trudy Reese; Trudy and I have worked together three times previously, Calico, Profluent and MS2.
I am also busy developing a small Rails app for a long-time friend who is starting her own accounting business with two other partners. I am not sure how much I can say at this time so I won't say anything more other than it is a great project to develop in Rails 2.0 and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Speaking of Rails, I have to give a plug to Ryan Bates; he produces Railscasts and I think they are terrific. In a 3-5 minute podcast he shows me more than I could hope to learn in an hour of trial and error. If you are like me and trying to ramp-up on technique, I would most definitely recommend giving Ryan a listen.
Well back to getting my web site cleaned up and working on the Rails project. I'll try not to take so long before my next post.
I am also busy developing a small Rails app for a long-time friend who is starting her own accounting business with two other partners. I am not sure how much I can say at this time so I won't say anything more other than it is a great project to develop in Rails 2.0 and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Speaking of Rails, I have to give a plug to Ryan Bates; he produces Railscasts and I think they are terrific. In a 3-5 minute podcast he shows me more than I could hope to learn in an hour of trial and error. If you are like me and trying to ramp-up on technique, I would most definitely recommend giving Ryan a listen.
Well back to getting my web site cleaned up and working on the Rails project. I'll try not to take so long before my next post.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
What is the saying? "The only thing that is constant is change..." Sure enough. I had been working with a young start-up called BookRenter.com with a couple of really bright young engineers but alas the business wasn't generating sufficient revenue to keep me on so... I took a contract with a company in
My new client is a provider of educational tools, curriculum development, assessment and not sure what else. They are re-engineering the application and needed someone to help bootstrap the QA effort, so here I go again. It will be fun and pay the bills but I haven’t forgotten that I have my own project to get back to. Oh and to make it a bit more chaotic, I am taking another short contract with a former client in Denver to help them evolve their QA process as they grow their team in Bangalore.
I will let you know how it goes...
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